One of my Christmas presents was City on a Grid: How New York Became New York by Gerard Koeppel. I spend much of the next few days reading and learning about the New York Grid.
One of the first things that strikes a visitor to New York City is the grid pattern of streets in Manhattan. The grid doesn’t include the southern end of Manhattan since the old city was at the southern tip of the island that that just grew organically. The grid doesn’t extend to the far north of the island. But the grid does rule on most of the island.
I had known a bit about it from previous reading. I knew that at some point in the early 1800s, the city decided to plan future growth and came up with this grid plan. I didn’t know about it in any detail and figured this book would fill in those details.
New York Grid – the book
But it did much more than than I expected. The grid plan came from a 1811 three-man commission. But I had not even thought about what had happened in the way of mapping and panning earlier. City on a Grid covers that.
In New York City’s first two centuries, a jumble of streets in lower Manhattan were build by landowners as the city grew. In some case these followed pre-existing native paths. A few landowners laid out orderly streets to maximize land values as they subdivided their property. A similar grid was used in planning growth immediately north of the settled city.
In 1807 the state of New York formed a three-man commission with power to lay-out the streets and public squares of New York City above a line deemed to be the extent of the settled city. They had 4 years to complete their work.
But rather than go into details about the commission, their work (and what they did not do), and how the city developed after the plan, I’ll just say the book does a wonderful job of explaining that. In addition there is an extensive discussion of city design and the pros and cons of a grid design. The pictures are a great addition and the book has extensive references in back.
I highly recommend this book if you are interested in New York history or just curious about the grid.